tidewaterreview.com

Belle & Sebastian's Stuart David to write a book about the band

By Carolyn Kellogg

12:27 PM EDT, May 16, 2013

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Stuart David, a founding member of Belle & Sebastian and its original bass player, will write a memoir about his time in the seminal indie pop band. The book, "In the All-Night Cafe," will be published by Little, Brown's Abacus imprint in the U.K. in spring 2015.

David's book will include the band's inception, when he met Stuart Murdoch, Belle & Sebastian's lead singer, in Glasgow, Scotland. It will cover their early years through the release of "Tigermilk," their debut album, which had a tiny pressing of 1,000 in 1996 and a larger release in 1999.

Little, Brown's editor in chief Antonia Hodgson said, "The proposal for 'In the All-Night Cafe'is wonderful — evocative, smartly observed and brimming with warmth and wit," the Bookseller reports. "It's a fascinating, intimate account of the band's early years that also has a lot to say about creativity, persistence and friendship."

Belle & Sebastian was founded by David and Murdoch in 1996 in Glasgow; before David had left the band, they had released "Tigermilk," "If You're Feeling Sinister," "The Boy With the Arab Strap" and "Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant."

David is the author of two novels, "Nalda Said" and "The Peacock Manifesto." After leaving Belle & Sebastian, he founded the band Looper.

"I don't feel that working in a band is time-consuming enough. There's always a huge amount of time spent doing nothing in a band -- hence all the drugs/alcohol to try and fill up the empty time," he once told an interviewer. "I don't really like alcohol or drugs, so I filled up the rest of the time writing books."